Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• We can fix economic inequality. But we need the political will to do it.

  Policymakers should re-target genuine full employment (the Fed is making good steps in this direction). The federal minimum wage should be substantially increased. The right to form unions should be vigilantly protected. The unemployment insurance system should be modernized and made substantially more-generous, both as a safety net during bad times but also to make the threat of job loss less corrosive to workers' confidence in wage-bargaining with employers.

  Top tax rates should be raised, and taxes on capital incomes should be pushed much closer to taxes on labor income. Key sources of economic security that workers currently have to bargain over with employers - like pensions and health insurance - should be instead provided universally through public programs. Social Security should be made more generous and a robust expansion of public health insurance - Medicaid and Medicare and public options in Obamacare - should be undertaken.

• Trends in Extreme Distress in the United States, 1993-2019

  The proportion of the US population in extreme distress rose from 3.6% in 1993 to 6.4% in 2019. Among low-education midlife White persons, the percentage more than doubled, from 4.8% to 11.5%. Regression analysis revealed that (1) at the personal level, the strongest statistical predictor of extreme distress was "I am unable to work," and (2) at the state level, a decline in the share of manufacturing jobs was a predictor of greater distress.

• What's Wrong with Social Science and How to Fix It: Reflections After Reading 2578 Papers

  Criticizing bad science from an abstract, 10000-foot view is pleasant: you hear about some stuff that doesn't replicate, some methodologies that seem a bit silly. "They should improve their methods", "p-hacking is bad", "we must change the incentives", you declare Zeuslike from your throne in the clouds, and then go on with your day.

  But actually diving into the sea of trash that is social science gives you a more tangible perspective, a more visceral revulsion, and perhaps even a sense of Lovecraftian awe at the sheer magnitude of it all: a vast landfill-a great agglomeration of garbage extending as far as the eye can see, effluvious waves crashing and throwing up a foul foam of p=0.049 papers. As you walk up to the diving platform, the deformed attendant hands you a pair of flippers. Noticing your reticence, he gives a subtle nod as if to say: "come on then, jump in".

• US 2020 election: The economy under Trump in six charts

  During his first three years in office, President Trump oversaw an annual average growth of 2.5%. The last three years of the Obama administration saw a similar level of growth (2.3%) along with a significantly higher figure (5.5%) in mid-2014.
  ...
  Under Trump, in the three years prior to the pandemic, there were an additional 6.4 million jobs. In the last three years under Obama, seven million jobs were added.

• Qualcomm's Founder On Why the US Doesn't Have Its Own Huawei

  Irwin Jacobs

  Qualcomm, by selling companies a comprehensive chipset that could power a cellphone, actually made it easier for new Chinese competitors to hit the market, because they had the tools to create a product instantly. "Unfortunately," he says, "nobody in the US has really run with it" and done the same thing.
  ...
  Another complicating factor is that governments in China and Europe have had industrial aid policies that helped their telecom firms in a way that the US has not. "Our government has not provided R&D support or other support that Huawei and ZTE (another successful Chinese firm) managed to get from their own government," Jacobs says.

• Has Business Left Milton Friedman Behind?

  The economist taught a generation of corporate leaders that profi should be their main motive. A new group of C.E.O.s begs to differ.

  But consider how, last year, the Business Roundtable, an industry group that includes the leaders of Apple, Amazon and Walmart, changed its "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation." What once had been an organizing philosophy heavily influenced by Mr. Friedman's focus on profits for shareholders has since been replaced with one that espouses "a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders" - not just shareholders but employees, suppliers, customers and affected communities. This move was seen as a tipping point for corporate governance by some observers and a cynical public relations ploy by others.

• Apple: how app developers manipulate your mood to boost ranking

  The more sophisticated techniques stay within the rules but draw on behavioural psychology to understand your mood, emotions and behaviour - they are not hacking the system; they are hacking your brain.
  ...
  By allowing developers to request the in-app prompt at a time of their choosing, developers can achieve "sample bias" by zeroing in on their fans and avoid asking users deemed a risk.

• How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism

  Cory Doctorow book.

  The latest version of this critique comes in the form of "surveillance capitalism," a term coined by business professor Shoshana Zuboff in her long and influential 2019 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Zuboff argues that "surveillance capitalism" is a unique creature of the tech industry and that it is unlike any other abusive commercial practice in history, one that is "constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism." It is a new and deadly form of capitalism, a "rogue capitalism," and our lack of understanding of its unique capabilities and dangers represents an existential, species-wide threat. She's right that capitalism today threatens our species, and she's right that tech poses unique challenges to our species and civilization, but she's really wrong about how tech is different and why it threatens our species.

• ClinicalTrials.gov

  Database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies conducted around the world.

  Search for actively recruiting studies that you may be able to participate in or learn about new interventions/treatments that are being considered.

• Rootclaim

  Rootclaim outperforms human reasoning by correcting for the biases and flaws of human intuition. The platform integrates all available evidence, assesses it for credibility and uses probabilistic models to reach conclusions about the likelihood of competing hypotheses. Its conclusions represent the best available understanding of the complexity and uncertainty in our world.